What Bravery Is
by Lady Altair
Summary: We cannot all be brave in the same ways: A year under the Carrows for Lavender Brown of Gryffindor, Padma Patil of Ravenclaw, Susan Bones of Hufflepuff, and Daphne Greengrass of Slytherin. Eventual FourShot. [Chapter 4, Daphne Greengrass: Fair Lady]
1. Chapter 1

Title: What Bravery Is

Disclaimer: No, not mine. Not ever.

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The first time Amycus Carrow nailed her hands to her desk, she screamed. She had refused to hex a Hufflepuff Second Year…a little twelve-year-old boy, small and blond and shaking in fear.

He'd forgotten his homework.

_That _was his offense.

Horrified, Lavender had mouthed a 'no', unable to tear her eyes away from the little boy or even find her voice to speak. Carrow had snarled, waved his wand, and Lavender's hands were seized from where she had them clenched in her lap, forced against the surface of her desk, conjured iron spikes driving through flesh and crushing delicate bone before burying themselves deep into the wood surface.

The whole class had frozen into a tableau, the rest of the students round eyed in terror and astonishment. In pale-faced shock, she had stared at her hands in silence for a long moment before the pain wove through her nerves and finally registered. And then she had screamed, a long, terrible, wounded cry that echoed in the deathly quiet classroom.

Lavender had cried quietly throughout the rest of class, too terrified to make any more of a fuss. Seamus was sitting behind her, his hand stroking her back in a silent attempt at comfort.

When class was dismissed, Carrow left her there, nailed to her desk. Parvati had had to hold her still while Seamus pulled out the nails, his own hands shaking a little as he did so.

The blood stained her desk, and every day Lavender stared at the dark red stain and prayed with all she had that Carrow would not call on her, that she would not have to keep herself from crying in fear as she refused to raise her wand, that she would not have to stifle her scream and muffle her sobs to silent tears. That was all she could do. She did not have the strength for more, and she was ashamed.

As she sat in class, hands pinned down and silent tears streaming down her cheeks, she wished she was the real sort of Gryffindor, the kind that would do something more than silently shake her head, place her hands on her desk and wait for her punishment. She wanted to act like the Gryffindor she was, to be brave.

That was what Neville did, scornfully baiting Carrow with clever words until the Death Eater furiously shot hexes at him.

That was what Parvati did, playing both the eager student and the dunce, to fool Carrow and waste time with her failed attempts, keeping those more enthusiastic about their lessons from having a go.

That was what Seamus did, casually leaning back in his chair as though he hadn't a care in that world, carelessly declining Carrow's demand with a wave of his hand as though the Death Eater were offering him a biscuit at a pleasant tea.

They were real Gryffindors, but she was only Lavender Brown, and so she sat, hot tears streaming down her cheeks and hotter blood dripping down onto her knees.


	2. Chapter 2

Title: What Bravery Is

_Just a Little Bit of Rebellion_ (2/4)

Author's Note: I had intended to update this more quickly (in fact, have it finished by now) but real life interfered in the form of my Grand Transatlantic Relocation (i.e. I'm moving back to England for school tomorrow and it's been crazy getting everything in order) but it will get done, as I've got the ideas. It just might take a bit longer, since after tomorrow I'll be working to get back in the motions of school and living overseas and making a point to get out and make new friends and _not _be sitting in my room feeling homesick. In any case, don't give up on me.

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The papers were hideously foolish. Turning in papers to Amycus Carrow which had, wedged between the top and bottom paragraphs of the scroll (which were appropriately dark and ugly, detailing all sorts of dark and ugly Dark Arts), various literary efforts: imaginative stories about the exploits of the Magnificent and Wonderful Harry Potter—coded "We-Know-Who" in case Amycus could recognize the name—essays arguing the intellectual superiority of the Common Flobberworm to the "newly discovered creature Amycus Carrow" and discussing the negative effects of the excessive inbreeding practiced by certain Pureblood families in the past centuries. The last of which was actually quite well-researched, far better so than any thing that preceded or followed it on the scroll. Nothing turned into Amycus needed any more than the phrases "Crucio" "excellent use on a subject conducted outside of class" and "dirty Mudblood" included somewhere within.

Padma had long suspected that Amycus could not read any more than to recognize 'Crucio' and 'mudblood' and a few other key phrases, but she'd never thought to use it until he made Parvati cry.

Padma had had to calm a stricken, sobbing Parvati after class one day, after her sister had had to hold her best friend still while another Gryffindor boy prised great nails out of her hands. Parvati never cried; she was brave.

Padma couldn't forgive that, so she returned to Ravenclaw Tower, sat down in her common room and calmly began transcribing a rather nasty poem she'd written about the Carrows which expressed a rather keen interest in the exact nature of their relationship. She'd always been quite clever with rhyme and words.

She'd started playing dumb with the actual spellwork in Dark Arts class; it wasn't that hard, but rather insulting. She raised her wand and 'attempted' all the terrible spells he was teaching them. She'd not yet managed to cast a successful Crucio, but Amycus, none too bright, had approvingly assured her she would in time, "because a Ravenclaw was second only to Slytherin". It was repulsive to her, to simper and giggle nervously and act disappointed when she couldn't manage to make a little kid writhe in agony, but she had her revenge in her papers.

She was only brave enough to write 'Padma Patil' on top of her scrolls, attaching her name to the written mockery of the Carrows and turning it in for Amycus' perusal. It didn't seem like much when her year mates were submitting daily for pain and mutilation, for the sole reason, as Neville put it later, of giving everyone a little bit of hope. But it was all she could manage. She wasn't brave; the hat had placed her in Ravenclaw just as quickly as it placed Parvati in Gryffindor in the next moment.

She'd been getting away with her near-daily mockery of the siblings for a good number of months, with the returned scrolls (all of them with each mention of 'filthy mudblood' and 'crucio' circled in red, with an excellent mark at the top and a smiley face beside it) being passed around to the rest of the school. Pride and vanity had always been her failing; she'd not been content to secretly mock the Carrows right under their ugly, misshapen noses. Other people had to know just how clever and daring she was. What was the point, after all, if no one else knew? It was like playing Trivial Pursuit by herself; you weren't really right if someone wasn't there to see you.

It was inevitable that, eventually, a paper was going to fall into the wrong hands. Another student would accidentally drop the paper in the wrong place, Alecto (who seemed to be slightly more literate than her dunce of a brother) might happen to glance over the right section, a Slytherin might catch wind and tattle (or any student, really, if adequately fearful and desperate to redirect attention). There were a hundred different possibilities that came down to one conclusion; Padma knew she was going to get caught, knew it with a certainty.

She considered this briefly as she wrote her name across the top of another parchment scroll woven through with insults. She hesitated, staring down at her latest work.

Really, she shouldn't. Wasn't it enough, all those times she'd already gotten away with it? She didn't need to continue…what was she really proving, anyway? Her point had been made, over and over and why not quit while she was ahead?

There was no real reason. She passed it up along the row to where Amycus was tossing them into a basket.

It was just her little bit of rebellion, after all, not bravery of any sort.

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Just a little thank you to all those who review. It really means a lot to know these are being enjoyed. 


	3. Chapter 3

_Except When It Isn't_

A/N: Birthday present chapter (I turned twenty today)!

This one (and maybe Daphne Greengrass's, after) is going to be a little different, because this one (and possibly the one after, not sure yet) involve a kind of bravery through someone else, and that involves a level of outside character-interaction that hasn't been present in the other two.

Anyway, thank you so much for reading and reviewing, especially to my loyal readers and reviewers, your kind and consistent words are so thrilling to me; that you enjoy my writing so much as to _keep coming back_ is flattering beyond my ability to convey. THANK YOU!

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Susan Bones had been instilled from a young age with her family's idea that honesty was always best (except when it wasn't.) Her Aunt Amelia tried rather unnecessarily to further elaborate on their family's creed on Susan's sixteenth birthday. Susan understood, it was easy enough; honesty just was the best idea (except when it wasn't).

It was honesty that got her family killed. "Best of the age," people said about her Uncle Edgar and Aunt Sarah, and Susan was rather proud to think they were. They were the best, and it made them even better that they were trustworthy and true; that was hard to find in Wizarding society, where the best tended to be that way by trickery and lies. Uncle Edgar and Aunt Sarah were the best, and they were trusted with important things, and they died for their steadiness; they took what had been entrusted to them to their graves (her parents told her that; Susan was never quite sure what they had known that was so dangerous).

Everyone said that Boneses were the best liars (because they were the best at everything else), but found such a skill beneath them—that they were the best and most noble of their kind and weaker for it.

Susan didn't remember her aunt and uncle, or her elder cousins (it was odd to think of them as her elders, because they're eternal children in her grandmother's photographs, and Susan had already become something they never had the chance to be), but the Carrows did, damn them. They tormented her and one time Amycus dragged her into his office, down into an old, dented Pensieve and made her watch borrowed memories of her family's deaths. It made Susan so ill she couldn't sleep well for weeks, and she wished she knew where Neville'd got to (he'd defended her when she cried in a Dark Arts class a few weeks ago and got beaten for his trouble; part of her wanted to hope that the bruised, awkward hand he put on hers after Amycus stormed from the room was more than he'd do for just anyone) but he was gone, gone from classes to who knew where.

Their families had been great friends, once, long ago. Susan wondered if Neville had ever seen those photos, of her parents and his and Aunt Sarah and Uncle Edgar, of them as infants, surrounded by all her elder cousins. She cannot help but wonder if they were the only ones left from those old photographs, if her parents were truly…gone, if You-Know-Who had felled these great families to their two last children. If he'll demolish the House of Bones and the House of Longbottom altogether in one fell swoop, here, sometime soon.

She knew he wouldn't remember, but then neither did she…photographs aren't memories.

Susan is a Bones and painfully honest for it (except when she's not). When Neville asked her, late at night when they sat up alone, if she was afraid, she said 'no.'

She didn't often sleep as much at night; nightmares woke her up often and this one particular night, she wasn't the only one awake. The absence of Neville's soft snoring across the row was always very obvious because it was the soothing sort of white noise that put Susan at ease; everyone else seemed to have stopped breathing. They were all awake too, uneasy in the dark at the quiet sniffling from the corner.

He was a shape in the darkness against the pillows in the corner. Any other time, or for anyone else, Susan might've turned in her hammock and tried to let them be.

It wasn't that he needed her. Everyone here was keen to give Neville a pat on the back and a kind, encouraging word after he stood up again in another show of remarkable valiance and was beaten down for it. He didn't need her, but no one else was climbing out to talk to him.

Susan struggled upright quietly, carefully extricating herself from the hammock and standing. When she sat down next to him, he didn't say anything and turned his face away. They exchanged admonitions to return to bed, but neither moved, and neither spoke anymore.

The sounds Neville was making weren't really like any crying she'd heard before, but it was Neville and it was scaring Susan. She almost wanted to shake him, terrified, and shout 'but you're supposed to be the brave one, what are you doing?' but she didn't. And it didn't make sense, because if all of this mess was so horrific that Neville was crying, then the world might be ending…and Susan didn't know when the scared, forgetful little eleven-year-old became their paragon of courage, but she didn't know what would happen to them without him.

Susan took his hand instead, lacing her skinny long fingers with his thick, funny boys' ones (they were too wide and her splayed fingers started to ache after a little while, but she didn't let go.) He cried a little longer, nearly silent, his hand big and warm and rough in hers as she sat motionlessly beside him, her head bowed and long golden braid snaking over her shoulder to dangle above her lap.

"I think I want to be ordinary again," Neville said quietly at last, all the tears gone from his voice. "It was easier."

"You weren't ever ordinary, Neville," Susan corrected him gently, knowing the whole room was silently listening to them speak. Neville pulled Susan's hand against his chest, wrapping it in his other hand and she reached over, as well, and they settled back into the quiet of the night again, hands clasped and heads tilted together.

"Are you afraid, Susan?" he asked, sounding young and alone.

She answered after a long moment's pause (_except when it's not)._ "No. I trust you, and I trust Harry. You're going to keep us sane, and he's going to save us all, and toss out the Carrows, and we'll go out and find our families—" (Susan swallowed hard; Carrow said her father was dead and who knew about her Muggle mother…) "And it'll be just fine," she finished in a struggling whisper. Neville's grip on her hand was painful, but she didn't pull away.

That's all that was said, and the two sat in the suspended quiet for a while as gradually the awkward quiet of a room filled with conscious people trying to feign sleep morphed over into the soft harmony of steady breathing.

He walked Susan back to her hammock (all four extra steps) his grip still strong on her hand. He leant into whisper 'thank you' to her, and Susan frowned.

"For what?" she asked, looking up into his tired, bruised face.

Everyone else was asleep, but none would've heard the words that Neville breathed against her hair. "No one else would've got up to hold my hand. And no one else would've lied to me. I needed someone to be brave for me, just for a little while."

They looked at each other for a moment, brown eyes locked to hazel, before Neville ducked his head away shyly, retreating back to his hammock with a quick, awkward glance back and an even quicker, more awkward 'goodnight, s-Susan.'

Susan didn't realize until she was curling back into her hammock how little she'd been breathing; her chest was aching from it. Being brave for Neville Longbottom was rather a scary thing.


	4. Chapter 4

What Bravery Is

_Fair Lady_ (4/4)

Author's Note: The end of this particular piece.

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Daphne Greengrass had never done an unselfish thing in her life. It was simply not the way she operated. She _had_ to be selfish. If she wasn't going to take care of herself, no one else was going to; not her handsome halfwit of a High Pureblood father (wherever he was), not the beautiful, aristocratic Muggle mother he'd abandoned so long ago (for whom Daphne was naught but an unpleasant reminder amidst her new _normal_ family.) There was no one to care, so Daphne cared for no one but herself. 

She had to be selfish to survive, especially in Slytherin House, where everyone knew the shame of her illegitimate half-blood birth. They wouldn't have liked her, anyway, had her parentage not been so scandalous; even at eleven, she was a bitter, angry, and unloved little girl, brought up in a house where she was denied nothing but the attention and love lavished on her younger half-siblings. _The normal ones._

She was beautiful and talented and liked by no one, least of all by those she called housemates. Even Seamus Finnigan, who was pulling her into empty classrooms to bunch up her skirt and make a bruised-up mess of her neck with his mouth (she left the marks there; it was masochistically pleasing to hear Pansy and Millicent gossip loudly on how she was probably fucking the Headmaster, or else she'd have been tossed out long ago, what with her dirty-blooded upbringing), he didn't like her either.

Minerva McGonagall refused her outright when she approached the Gryffindor Head of House for private Animagus tutoring in the dark of Hogwarts under the Carrows. 'I haven't the time,' was the reply, but what that really meant was 'Not for a Slytherin.'

It was weeks later when the Alecto Carrow came barrelling into the Transfiguration classroom, bellowing about some round of rebellion involving some graffiti about Dumbledore's Army, no doubt perpetrated by a Gryffindor.

She'd been in the process of rounding up the Gryffindors (she was eyeing Seamus Finnigan in particular, in Neville Longbottom's absence) when Daphne, seated by herself in the front of the Slytherin side, coolly and bitingly confessed to the entire affair.

Alecto dragged her by her beautiful long hair all the way down to the dungeons. The Carrows almost didn't believe her for a while ("Even those DA mudblood-lovers won't have you, you wretch," Alecto hissed at her) but Daphne managed to convince them, through her characteristic condescension and haughty eye-rolls (it got harder to pull them off with any aplomb, after a few minutes of torture under their wands, but she managed quite well) that it had seemed to her the best way to infuriate them.

In the end, they tortured her to unconsciousness and left her in the hallway to be found by Slughorn's first year potions class.

Seamus was impressed with her; he thinks she did it for him, that her lies were meant to accept blame for something she knew he'd done because she _cared._ The next time she pushed him into the empty Charms classroom for another shag, he was so gentle with her that she straightened her clothes halfway through and stalked off in confusion.

He said thank you, the next time he managed to get her alone (she'd been avoiding him, making it difficult) and he kissed her so nicely, like she was a sweet normal girl that he liked, not some cold, bitter Slytherin he shagged because she was beautiful and she let him. Daphne almost didn't mind, because it reminded her of dreams she'd had where mothers loved you and fathers didn't regret your shameful existence as a youthful indiscretion and boys were princes who petted your hair and kissed you like were their fair lady and not a whore.

Seamus said she'd been brave and that he was proud of that. Weeks ago, Daphne would have laughingly told him that the only reason she'd put on such a show was to impress McGonagall into giving her the Animagus tutoring she wanted so badly, how it had worked and how she had fooled him and everyone else.

But Daphne just kept her mouth shut, went to the extra Transfiguration lessons she'd paid so dearly for on the floor of Alecto's office, and let Seamus believe that she was worth something.

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Yes, another of my random pairings. I love exploring new places. Daphne and Seamus will go on. I'm already working on another oneshot for them. In any case, I hope you've enjoyed What Bravery Is. I'd like to thank my loyal reviewers, who've been sticking with me and reviewing every chapter. I cannot even fully convey how wonderful it is to hear what you think, and I truly, _deeply _appreciate every minute you spend writing them. 3 


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